Shove it up your Quora no. 1
Should liberals be less condescending when trying to debate conservatives?
https://www.quora.com/Should-liberals-be-less-condescending-when-trying-to-debate-conservatives
That is the question I was charged with answering. If you don't know, there is a sometimes wonky, sometimes troll infested site called Quora (www.quora.com). It is a site where people essentially go to ask questions of the community. So if you have a question you post it and experts and laypersons from around the globe will give you their two cents. I have participate off and on for long enough that some community members will direct a question directly to me to answer.
So that is where I found myself when I was asked the above question.
I had a moment’s pause after the election in November.* I reflected on the discussions concerning political correctness and the pent up resentment felt by that portion of the electorate; a resentment that Trump pandered to and fueled by going beyond critiquing the excesses of political correctness and digressing into race baiting, marginalizing whole swaths of people, and adopting a disregard for all civil/social norms. I had spent the whole spring and summer railing against this candidate. Asking my friends who supported him how they rationalized his conduct and reconciled what he was doing and saying with the norms and standards they were applying so severely to other candidates, especially HRC. I studied up on confirmation bias and the psychological mechanisms that enabled these friends and colleagues to jettison all of the norms and values they held for their entire lives and that they applied so aggressively to every other candidate they ever encountered. I would ask them why they didn't believe our intelligence community that Russia was meddling in the election to the benefit of Trump and why they no longer believed Russia was a possible threat (some of these people were debating me and taking a harsher stance in retaliating after Russia annexed the Crimea and the issues in Ukraine. I distinctly remember arguments about bringing Ukraine into NATO immediately and to move whole battalions into Poland and Ukraine. Less than six months later they are saying “it would be better to work with Russia.” “Well, its undeniable that Putin is a stronger leader than Obama.” “We can work with Russia on space exploration.” (Wtf, right?)
No, my pause lasted right up until I heard someone say “Trump was elected with a mandate.” Then they started rubbing it in every liberal’s face they could. They puffed up like peacocks, strutted around making declarative statements about how his election repudiated every element of social progress made since the 1960s. They buried any sense of humility under a smorgasbord of self indulgence and congratulations. I saw a minority group of predominantly white men relish in their bigotry, resentment at not previously being welcomed for their bigoted ideas, loathing of social progress, and resentment that "their" America had been progressing along a continuum while they stood still. They resented being left behind and decided it was a good time to throw a wrench in the works as opposed to either trying to catch up or step gracefully aside.
No, I don't have any pauses left. The people that support Trump cannot articulate viable reasons for their support other than the shallow platitudes and false promises they wanted so desperately to be true. In exchange for these rhetorical tokens they were willing to forfeit their values and country in order to satiate selfish and indulgent perceived slights. They are a cadre of people that have not earned the opportunity to be forgiven because even today they scapegoat and continue with their mental contortions in order to continue to rationalize their support for this clown.
This is a group that needs to be shamed into understanding what they have done and the consequences. We disenfranchise felons in this country when many of those felons would likely exercise their franchise more responsibly than the Trump supporter. Never have I seen such a well defined political and ethnic class that historically wielded political power over other groups that they marginalized and violently suppressed, act with such disregard for the country and the majority of Americans in order to feel better about themselves.
Beyond the Trump phenomenon, I look at the Republican leadership in Congress and the tyrannical use of political power that has led to the breakdown of institutional norms to such a degree that any semblance of respect for the minority party is gone. The shameless exercise of political power purely for powers sake is demonstrated by the abject failure to put forward a policy prescription that they can agree on among themselves. They are not a party that wants to govern, they are a gaggle of loosely affiliated people that just want to prevent anyone else from being able to govern in a way that benefits the country.
Even when the prime opportunity to do something for us average folk lands in their lap they fuck it up. For 8 years they decried Obamacare. Their rhetoric soared and their sheep baaed. Everything about Obamacare was attacked it was a scorched earth approach. Then wham! 2016 election and Trump. So they had unified control of the federal government. It was unbelievable. So now lets repeal that black man's agenda! Yeehaw!
The problem: they had so thoroughly attacked Obamacare they didn't have any conservative ideas that they hadn't already vilified. See Obamacare was originally their idea. It was the conservative solution to the healthcare issue. But after 8 years of attacking the ACA, Republicans had boxed themselves into an ideological quandary; there is no way they could go anywhere to the left of Obamacare so they took the only road available to them. So they are blowing the whole thing up passing bills that only have 11% of the electorate's support. There is one group of people that benefits from the Republican's and Trump's healthcare machinations, and so that it is clear, you are not a member of that group and never will be. Here is neat graphic that depressingly puts the scope and impact of the latest Republican iteration of a bill in perspective:
This chart shows the stunning trade-off at the heart of the GOP health plan
Right now, Lucifer's minions are busy roping off a special VIP section in Hell for Trump, McConnell, and Ryan...its going to be a never ending smorgasbord of entitlements to cut and to then pass the proceeds to the top 1%; which sounds like heaven to these ass hats right? The twist is they have to personally strangle to death each person that will now die prematurely and unnecessarily as a result of the cuts.
*I am talking here about self proclaimed conservative Trump supporters. Bill Kristol and the ideological conservatives that stood by their principles and did not support Trump and who still keep a wary eye on him are excluded and get a pass from the above critique. They are principled people and hopefully we will see their resurgence.